Avatar: The Legacy of Steel - Chapter 2 - Hands Into The Water
by AHKyle
Summary: Iluq is a skilled ice dancer, a scholar-athlete and a steadfast friend. He and his family live in a Water Tribe neighborhood of Republic City. His life would be totally normal, if he weren't best friends with Jin Hua Bei Fong, the next Avatar. Jin's Avatar abilities are unpredictable; Can Iluq help Jin gain control over himself and his emotions? Or will both friends be consumed?


Avatar: The Legacy of Steel

Book 1: Fall

Chapter 2: Hands into the Water

I feel best when I'm spinning, spiraling, cutting roses into the ice beneath my feet. It's never truly cold in the United Republic; there's too much industry, too much pollution. When I was born, my parents were working on leaving the North Pole. The culture had grown too conservative, my father said, and it was no longer a place to raise children. My mother was from the southern tribe, and she suggested we move back to her home at the South Pole, but my father decided it would be best for me to live somewhere that had let go of orthodoxy and custom. He wanted a home for me that would embrace me, no matter who or what I became.

What I became, or what I'm becoming, is skilled.

My parents don't understand why I'm so focused and driven, but they support me anyway, which I appreciate. Whether I'm working on my homework or my waterbending, they see the effort I put in, and they encourage it. The trouble is, they want me to be well rounded, so I feel like I'm often spread thin. Water accumulates in places, and when it freezes, it can help things stick together or, at times, break things apart. I feel like I'm not allowed to accumulate anywhere. Puddles, pools, rivers—all of those bodies have a reason to exist, a reason why they exist. I don't know what my reason is, but sometimes I think—

Sometimes I think my reason is to be there for another person.

"Iluq, show me how you did that!"

"Iluq, what's the answer to this last question?"

"Iluq, you have to help me!"

In my tribe, anyone can be a waterbender, but the abilities a person has are often secondary to the role they are supposed to play in the tribe. Even today, girls who use their waterbending to fight are called aggressive, intense. Wouldn't it be better if you learned to heal? The elders would say. I've heard stories of Katara, one of Avatar Aang's companions, who refused to let the North's rules about who could learn waterbending keep her from becoming a true master. She was from the southern tribe, like my mother, like Avatar Korra. No one told her what to do, who she was supposed to become. She just became it.

"When you grow up, what kind of bender do you want to be?"

When I was little, I went to a Water Tribe Day School instead of an integrated school. My parents were afraid that living in the United Republic would keep me from knowing my culture, even though we ate Southern Tribe street food every weekend, even though most of our neighbors were benders, and waterbenders at that. I always saw different ways of being a bender, and of being a waterbender in particular, so it was odd to me that they felt I needed a special school to show me who I was, to help me learn the culture I had been born into. The way I saw it, the culture I was born into was a hybrid culture. Benders from all over the world come to the United Republic to find freedom from nations who constrain their identity and their expression, from homelands who no longer feel like home. They yearn to find a place where they belong, whether they can bend their home element or not. In the United Republic, it matters where you came from, but that matters less than the person you become. As a child of the North and South, the United Republic has been the only place that I have called my home. I appreciate my heritage, but I don't especially care where I came from.

I want to know who I am, and who I can be, if I try my best.

I know I'm too young to have all the answers, but so was Katara. And so was Aang. They grew up in a time of war, and they had to grow up fast. It may be peaceful now, but that's only because Avatar Korra worked so hard to make it that way. The next Avatar has not been found in the Earth Kingdom. Ba Sing Se has never been the same since the Earth Queen was killed, all those years ago—and the Earth Kingdom at large, well, most of it is part of the United Republic now. I think that as the lines between the nations have become less defined, it has become more difficult for groups like the White Lotus to do what they were meant to do: find the Avatar, protect them, train them to become the bridge they must be in order to maintain peace. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to scour the world, hoping to find the young Avatar. It would be like searching the ocean for a drop of blood, or maybe, it's like—

"Iluq, please! Are you in there? Answer me!"

I snap myself out of my pensive stupor. I know that voice, that tone.

Jin Hua Bei Fong, my best friend, needs my help, and he needs it now.

"I'm here!" I shout, not sure at first in what direction I need to go to find him. Is he outside my window, outside my bedroom door? I check both and find him down a story, outside, knocking on my front door. "I'll come right down! Wait a sec,"

Suddenly Jin does something I don't expect. He propels himself into the air and grabs hold of my window sill. "Help! I didn't mean to do that!" Fear; a more pronounced fear than I'm used to from him. I open my window and move to pull him inside, but he cries out before I can touch him. "I don't want to hurt you, please! Don't touch me."

I realize what I have to do. I grab my travel canteen from the rack on my door and fashion a rope out of the water. I guide it toward Jin's hands and weave it around his wrists. Then, I pull, and in he comes. We're both breathing heavily, first from fear and then from relief.

"Thank you, Iluq. I didn't know where else to go," he says. I don't know why he's scared, but I have a feeling it has something to do with his sudden ability to fly.

"Of course," I say. "How can I help?"

"I…" Jin gets close to me, closer than he ever has. He just told me not to touch him and now he's… "I just needed to get away from them."

"From who? Your parents?"

This just makes him freeze up. A different kind of fear grips Jin, like the cold wind of winter. Instead of shivering, though, he holds himself tightly, as if something is threatening to pull him away.

"My mom, I… I hurt her."

"What do you mean? What did you do?"

"Ahhh! Ahhh!" Jin starts to cry out, in a way I've only heard him cry when someone has touched him without asking first. I know I need to back off, questions won't help me understand what happened. I have to find another way. Waterbending is all about navigating points of resistance, understanding the flow of energy around and through other things. It can be smooth, rough, broad, precise. So, too, can a person's words.

"I'm sure your mom is okay, Jin. She… She's a strong woman. You would never hurt her on purpose." To reassure someone, you can't demand anything from them. You have to accept their feelings as they are, and meet them with a front of strength and calm. I must be a glacier.

"I hurt her! I hurt her, and I was scared, because, because—"

When water comes at you fast, there are a few things you can do to avoid being washed away: You can stem its flow, by freezing it at its source; you can make yourself the point of resistance, and let the water rush past and around you; or you can accept the torrential outpouring with grace and calm. You can become what the water needs, and in doing so, you become what the water is. The water surrounds you, and you surround it, and then—

"You were scared. Something frightened you, and you had to protect yourself."

_It's what you've always done, Jin, as long as I've known you. _

A child with balled fists, thrashing about in a tearful rage—that's how I remember you, back when we first met. I watched as a teacher ushered you away from the other children, to take you somewhere. I had no idea where, but wherever it was, it was a better place. Calmer. No one was supposed to touch you. That's what the teachers told us.

"Jin is a special sort of child," they said. "It seems human touch, when it is unwanted, is harmful to him. If you want to touch Jin, or hold his hand, you must ask for his permission first."

I remember everyone being afraid to ask Jin anything. I remember hearing children talking about you in hushed tones. I remember, before I even knew her, that your sister, Jingcha, was a special sort of child as well. She had no fear of human contact. She loved contact sports, and was rough with other children. Her intensity scared other girls and invited ire from other boys. When anyone approached you, she would roar and rasp like a lionturtle to fend them off. When I approached you, what she said was,

"What do you want, blue eyes?"

"I wanted to ask him a question," I said.

"You can ask me first," she said, firm, her stance like a pro-bender's, ready for anything I could throw her way. She seemed like your older sister, but I knew she was your twin. Your hair was even cut the same, though hers resisted a comb, and looked matted in places.

"I want to know… what your favorite color is."

Jingcha didn't seem to think this was a terribly dangerous question to impart to her brother, and to me, it seemed at first like she wanted to answer for herself. But really I think that she was curious to know, as we were all curious to know, what was going on inside your head. You could speak, and you could write, and you could listen. You didn't speak much back then. Every note that emerged from your mouth was of a fearful song. The world was too much for you, and I feel like, little by little, the world was beginning to think you were too much for it to accept. But I knew you were at least a little bit like me. I may not have felt the intensity of feeling that you did, but there was something swirling inside me that longed for release. It longed to be of use, to be seen and understood. It longed to reach out, and to help.

"I like… blue. Like your eyes. They're calm, but I'm…"

I could sense something about to boil over.

Jingcha could sense it too. It made her angry.

"I like your eyes, too," I said. And this is when I saw you for the first time, clearly.

You smiled, and your eyes were looking directly into mine. I could see that your eyes were the color of gold, and I knew exactly why your name was—

"Iluq," he says, and I am breathless. I want him to trust me. I've never wanted anything more than to make the boy who's afraid of being touched be unafraid to touch me, to be touched by me. I want to comfort him, enclose him, make him certain that no harm will be done to him. I want that, but—  
"Iluq, they're saying I'm the Avatar."

I want that, but I'm not allowed to want anything.

"Who's saying that? Your parents?"

"The White Lotus came to my house and Miss Sato was there with them. She told me there was a light they could see from the sky—and it was coming from my house."

"And that means you're the Avatar… of course. It all makes sense."

"What does?" What a question. I had to be careful not to let on too much.

It's not that I knew everything there was to know about the Avatar, and I certainly didn't have all the answers about Jin and… the way he was. But in the readings I had done about Avatar history, I had learned that there was no standard origin for an Avatar. Some Avatars were said to be naturally gifted with their home element, while others discovered their bending by accident. Not every Avatar was like Avatar Korra, who was physically skilled with bending even from an early age. The path of the Avatar was a singular one, but the life of the Avatar was one that necessarily involved and implicated the lives of others. Even Avatar Wan, entered into the historical record by Avatar Korra, had his animal companion—and of course, the light spirit, Raava. If Jin was really the Avatar, that meant he would need people to guide and protect him on his path toward becoming the bridge, toward becoming the great mediator between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Maybe, no—definitely, he would need someone like me.

"Jin, if you're the Avatar like you say, you don't have to be afraid. You're not gonna be alone in this, okay? You've got me. You've always had me, and you always will."

"I… Thank you, Iluq. I know you're on my side and I… I really need a friend."

"Hey, if you need me, I'm here."

"I need a friend that I can trust. A friend who can make my insides quiet."

And then he does something that startles me. He takes my hand in his.

"Iluq, my mom always says that I'm a special sort of person. She says I'm going to need guides and teachers so that I can become a good bender—a good Avatar. But I don't want that. I just want to hold someone's hand and not be afraid. I want to hold and be held and not be afraid of—and not be afraid to,"

With my free hand, I cup his hand gently. I'm almost afraid to touch him with my fingers. When I do, I'm not sure which one of us is shaking. Maybe we both are.

"I won't say you'll never be afraid again. But what I will say is, if you'll trust me, I won't leave your side. I won't let anyone hurt you or push you around."

I've always wanted to be Jin's strength, the one who could support him and fill in the gaps in his weaknesses. I thought I could keep him afloat, keep his heart aloft.

But he was dense and he was heavy; there was very little any of us could do to help him. I wasn't innocent of thoughts that Jin was someone to be fixed, someone to be solved. Even once I made friends with him, I thought of Jin like a puzzle. If I directed the water's flow in this direction, what would happen then? What would his reaction be? I had managed to get him to smile once; how could I make that happen again, and more often? I don't know if you could call what I did manipulative, but to me, making friends with Jin felt a lot like waterbending.

I always knew there were points of resistance I had to pass gently around. Touching them directly would cause him to retreat, avoid, distrust me. Over time, it felt like we could talk about almost anything. However, Jin never asked me to defend him, not even when the bullying got worse and the other boys became more aggressive.

"I wish you would let me help you," I told him, and his response told me everything.

"Next time," he said. Jin knew he needed defending. He hated it.

I worried that soon, he would hate me, just for wanting to help. I wanted to be close to him, I wanted him to want to be close to me. I was his supporter, and I wanted him to really believe my motives were good. But they weren't good, were they?

Water can soothe, it can be a healing salve, but it can also be biting to the touch—or scalding. There is a duality to all things, and to all people. Waterbending is no different. There is beauty and there is danger in it—and I am the one charged with deciding which rises to the surface. I learned to skate because I wanted to master the beauty of ice, the elegance, the precision of it all. When I'm spinning on the rink, the ice-blade extending from my sole helps me carve myself into the frozen ground at my feet. I can tuck into myself, speed and slow my spinning, and stand to stabilize. I can do things that the pros can do, and I'm just a kid.

I push myself so hard, and nobody even knows. There's no figure skating club at school. This is just for me. But I want it to be for someone else, too. I want people to know me, not just as the straight A student, not just as the loyal friend, but as the person I can become—the potential I have to become someone strong, and powerful—and good.

But good is not the way I feel when I see kids pick on Jin. I feel sick with anger. I feel desperate with rage. I want to reach into those boys and grab them by the heart. _You will _never_ harm him, ever again. You will never harm _anyone. I want to protect him, I want to be the one they direct their anger at, because I know that my ice is unbreakable. The frozen rink I skate on is soft beneath my feet; it parts like water as I glide and leap, and I know I have mastered it. I just want the chance to show everyone how hard I've worked, in private, with no one asking.

If Jin cannot face his fears, I will face them for him. I will face it all.

Jin rises from the floor and turns away from me. Without seeing his face, it's difficult to know what he's thinking, but I want—I want to say,

"I know you want to defend me, and protect me. Everyone thinks that I'm this fragile flower—even my mom. But the truth is, I don't think I'm fragile at all."

Jin turns around and holds an open palm towards me, as if offering me to take it. Then, a jet of flame bursts from his hand, narrowly avoiding the ceiling before coming down to a safe level. Jin's expression is firm, the fire's glow bringing out the gold in his eyes.

"I think I'm too powerful for this world."

"Iluq, honey, is everything okay up there? I thought I smelled smoke."

Jin puts his fire away quickly, and I am more relieved than anything.

"Everything's fine, Mom," I say. "Just doing some meditating."

I look at Jin with amazement. I knew that he could bend air—that's what enabled him to rocket himself up to my window. What I hadn't expected was that he could bend fire, too. What was most amazing to me was that fire was something he bent with passion and confidence. It was a power I had never seen him demonstrate and frankly, it was…

"How long have you been able to do that," I ask, breathless. Bubbling to the surface.

"I couldn't do anything before today. Well, last night." This is a clue, but I can't probe.

"How does it feel?" I ask. "To be able to bend, I mean."

"It feels a little bit scary, but also… exciting." A careful smile appears on his face. Today is his first day as a bender. I can still remember how it felt, to feel the push and pull of the tides, and to be able to push and pull them right back. We were on a shuttle boat coming from the North Pole. I was seven. My mother let me try and bend the water out of her canteen. It took me a little bit of back and forth but I managed to bring all of her canteen's contents out into a globe of water, along with some of the ocean spray. The boat veered slightly off course and the crewman asked us to avoid bending for the rest of our voyage.

It was something we laughed about, later. "I'm so proud of you," my father said.

"You're going to be a force of nature, Iluq."

In my mind, I already was. I had reached into the ocean without even meaning to, and I had pulled something out of it. It would be a long time before I could put my hands into the water and learn the things that can only be learned by touching it directly—but my bending journey had begun.

Now, Jin's journey as a bender—and an Avatar—is beginning, and I can tell this is a responsibility he does not take lightly.

"I'm glad there's a part of you that's excited, Jin,"

"I've always felt like something was wrong with me. All the other kids could bend, and I couldn't do… anything."

"We do have a lot of benders at our school," I said. Maybe even more than average. Non-benders were still in attendance (Jin was not a minority of one—at least, not before today) but the bending population of our school, and the United Republic at large vastly outweighs that of the non-benders. My science teacher says it's because bending is a dominant gene but that feels confusing to me. There's nothing wrong with being unable to bend. A lot of the non-bending kids in our class are even smarter than me. They can be soft and sensitive like an airbender or tough and rowdy like an earthbender—but they lack command over the elements. They lack a road map telling them—showing them how to use their bodies, their hearts, their minds. But they don't lack in character.

Jin never lacked in character, that's for sure. Whether he's the Avatar or something entirely new, Jin Hua Beifong has always been amazing to me, and that won't change.

"Does it feel different? Being able to bend fire?" I ask.

"Different compared to what?"

"Compared to, well, how it was before. When you made a fist and nothing came out."

I watch as Jin considers my words. He slowly closes his hand into a fist.

"I don't think that's how it works, Iluq."

Nothing had come out. No fire, no air, like before. And I guess that makes sense. Bending is not just physical. It is spiritual, mental, emotional. Jin's bending had to be all of those things, but this was only his first day as a bender. He couldn't just think, "Fire," and have fire come out. I mean, I assume that's how it is for firebenders. I've never really thought about it, to be honest.

"When you made that flame earlier, what did you think?"

"I didn't think anything," Jin says. "It was more of a feeling."

Jin's bending had to be tied to his emotions—but he was always so strongly emotional before, and he couldn't bend a rock. Why was that? I had thought Jin was a puzzle before—now he was practically a riddle. More importantly, though, he was a friend.

"When you were scared, you airbended. What did you feel when you made fire?"

Jin is silent for moment, pensive. Maybe he isn't sure what to say, or maybe, he is certain of what he feels and is afraid to say it.

"Iluq," he says. "I felt rage. I felt all of my anger, and I let only a little bit out."

Thank goodness he had restraint; my house could have gone up in flames.

"Have you been feeling angry a lot lately?"

"I'm always angry, but," he took a breath. "I'm not allowed to show it."

"Why not?" This, from the brother of Jingcha, from the brother of the girl who boxed boys bloody on the playground. Why could he not show his anger?

"The teachers, they taught me to hold my emotions inside and control them. They taught me breathing exercises I could do to keep everything from spilling out, to keep me from falling apart."  
"Jin…" It all made sense. When they would take Jin somewhere better, somewhere calmer, they would teach him how to manage his emotions. But he had to channel those emotions somewhere, didn't he? Otherwise he—otherwise, he would—

"I'm sorry, Iluq. I'm wasting your time. Thank you for letting me calm down."

"Jin, I want,"

"I should leave. Everyone's probably looking for me."

"Jin! You're not listening. Wait. I want you to come with me," I say, rising from my seat on my bed. "If you're the Avatar, you need to be able to bend more than just fire and air."

"I don't want to be,"

"I know, you're afraid right now. But to be a bender, you have to let go of fear."

These were Avatar Aang's words. I knew everything there was to know about him. The official history of the Avatars of the recent past was much more detailed than those of the other Avatars, at least outside of their respective nations. I knew a couple Avatars before Avatar Kuruk from the Water Tribe, but only because I had done my research. I knew that there were a lot of ways to be an Avatar. There were also a lot of ways to guide an Avatar, too.

I may not have been a master, but I could be a guide, and more than that, I could be a friend. That was enough for me, as long as I could know that Jin was safe and taken care of. Not much mattered more to me than that.

"Where do you want me to go?" Jin asks.

"I'll show you," I say.

There was a room in the basement of my house that held a small reservoir. Most waterbending houses in the city had something like it. Sink water was fine for most purposes, but it wasn't generally good quality. The water in the reservoir was connected to the natural bodies of water found throughout the city. When a waterbending family moved into their house, a healer from the Embassy would bring spirit oasis water to anoint the reservoir. The healer was usually a woman, but the one who came to our house was tall and muscular. They looked more like my father than my mother, but their voice was smooth like a gentle stream. I was seven years old and I saw someone who looked like I felt; strong, but gentle; a quiet power; a ball of ice, covered in snow. It was then that I determined I would learn how to heal. While the other boys practiced water whips and made sculptures, I learned what it took to heal a cut using only water. I knew how long it took to mend a shallow wound, and I understood what was different about burns compared to cuts and scrapes.

"You could be a doctor," my father said. "If we still lived in the north, I'd send you to medical school."

He knew that healing was a passion project of mine, but he never let me focus on it too much. "Learn the way that water moves; let it guide you into being the person you most want to be," he would say. What I wanted to be was precise. What I wanted to be was an expert.

Healing was not something you could get 'better' at, per se. It was an exercise of patience. You were only as good as the tools you used, which, in my case, was water. In order to use waterbending to heal, you needed pure, clean water and a patient soul. Your hands needed to be steady. All of your concentration, all of your intention needed to be set on repair. The process of mending a wound of your own could be painful, but mending another's wound was usually a waiting game. Healing usually doesn't feel particularly good, I've found. But once it's over, I always feel better, stronger, ready to take on the world.

I used ice skating to engage with my body in a world that wouldn't let me fight, and I used healing to engage my mind, and give me an outlet for the swirling, spiraling feeling I had inside. If Jin was anything like me, his mind was filled to the brim with thoughts he needed to let come to the surface. Whenever I had no more space in my mind, I always came down here, to the reservoir. I made shapes with ice and turned them back to water again. I put my hands in and pulled out my dreams, my fantasies. All around me they would flow, healing me, revealing me to no one, but myself. I could pantomime rage, joy, love, hate, pain—and I could release it from within me.

If Jin's bending was emotional, water could be his way into himself—and his way out.

"This place is dark," he says, as we descend the stairs to our basement. "Is there a light we can turn on?" I could hear the fear in his voice, slight, like a draft.

"There isn't, but don't worry," I say. "We'll be able to see plenty."

I venture into the dark. I know my way around, and it doesn't actually look all that dark to me. My mom says it's because waterbenders are strongest at night, when the sun's presence can only be sensed in the moon's glow. But in total darkness, for some reason, I am most calm. I kneel down in front of the reservoir. I put my hands into the water.

I set my intention, and it glows.

"How are you doing that?" Jin asks.

"This is what it looks like when a waterbender uses water to heal."

"It's beautiful," he says. Breathless.

I smile, the edge of my face cut from the darkness by the pale blue light emanating from my palms. "I think so too. Come sit with me," I say. I watch as Jin braves the darkness, careful not to trip over anything. There's nothing for him to trip over down here, though. A reservoir is not the same as a normal basement or an attic, really. It's a sacred space, a place personal to all those who wield water. Specifically, it is my sacred space, and I keep it clean.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to put your hands in. It can be a finger at a time, but I want you to just feel the water on your hands."

"I don't think I can do what you're doing. What if I can't,"

"You don't have to do anything. Leave everything to me. Just focus on breathing."

I have a theory about Jin that I've been working on: a theory about his relationship to touch. He physically recoils at unwanted touch, but that's at least understandable. No one likes to be touched without someone asking. For Jin, however, it is far too extreme a reaction to be normal. He must have been touched at an early age, in a way that was too painful for him to fathom. Such a wound is not easy to see, or easy to heal. But in darkness, in the coolness of water, it is easier to discern the root of pain. Every point of resistance can be unknotted, detangled, soothed through. Water is the best way to erode stone without destroying it. I think that Jin has a stone at the deepest part of himself, and, maybe, that stone has a crack. If I can just find my way there, I can—

Jin kneels down to my level and gingerly offers his first hand to the reservoir to take. His fingers are enveloped and then—nothing. No light, no change in temperature.

"Everything good?"

"It feels nice," he says. I smile.

"It's the purest water you'll find in the city. You'd have to go to the North Pole to find something more pure."

"Have you ever been there, Iluq? To the North?"

"…It's where I was born."

I am struck by the fact that Jin had never asked me where I came from before. Questions of "North?" or "South?" were familiar—and annoying—to me, because I was both. My mother moved to the North when she met my father, but it was never home to her. As a teenager, my mother was an amazing dancer. She performed intricate routines in a bending troupe at Southern festivals, and my father was making his way around the world when they met. They didn't fall in love at first; my mother was very professional about their connection. But my father said that from the moment he saw her, he knew:

"She could bend water with amazing strength, but she used her power to dazzle and amaze, not destroy. I loved that about her. I really admired her."

My mother said her joints hurt whenever I asked her to show me her bending style. But I knew she was lying, covering up her inner beauty. I think it exhausted her, to not have an outlet for everything she had inside. I know it exhausted me.

The boots I wear are perforated, and the soles are iced over, but they're designed in a way that lets me always have water on my person. Metal skates need to be polished or they rust. Skates that use ice are much more flexible and easier to maintain. When I go to the rink, I can be alone in a crowd. My path is singular, my flow entirely my own, and although I can weave through and around everyone, it never feels like I'm avoiding anything. I wonder if I was an airbender in another life. I wish I could be carefree like that all the time. On the ice, I feel most at home. I want my mother to see me the way I feel inside. I think I feel exactly like she did: wielding great power inside, but focusing it to a fine point, and opening that point out into a great spiral of wind, and water, and—

When Jin told me, "I think I'm too powerful for this world," I had thought to myself,

"You and me both, buddy." But the truth I think is less extreme. I'm not too powerful for my world. Water conforms to its container. When it is brought into the open air, it can grow and change, connect with other bodies and become more powerful, greater than it would have been all alone. I feel like my body is too small to contain my mind. Avatar Korra's water—I can't say what it was to her, but to me, water is thought and feeling. It is word and image—and it is as much a part of me as I am a part of it. I am not too powerful for the world.

I am filled to bursting, bigger than my body gives me space to become.

Another hand of his enters the reservoir and I return my hands to the water's cool grasp. I set my intention, not to heal—but to see. At first there is no glow coming from my hands. And then, I hear the breath beside me fall away. I feel it give way to a bright blue light—not unlike the moon. I open my eyes, and I see Jin, his hands still submerged, his eyes and mouth agape and overflowing with light. _Show_ _no fear, he can feel every part of you._

A voice. A voice unfamiliar to my ears and yet so comforting. I'm afraid to speak.

Who are you? My hands search for a presence in the water and find none.

_You hold a legacy in your blood, Iluq. You and Jin, both, have inherited great gifts._

It isn't a woman's voice, or a man's for that matter. It sounds like a voice out of a dream.

How can I help Jin? How can I be his guide?

_Jin does not need a guardian. He needs a spear, a shield and armor to match._

What can I be for him? A shield? His armor?

_You must follow your heart. You can wield water's cold fury and loving warmth, both. You are as the water is: flexible, capable of acts of great love as well as fearsome power. In order to become Jin's guide, you must seek yourself in the deepness of the coldest sea._

I'm not sure what that meant, but—Suddenly the light emanating from Jin's eyes are the only points of light I can see. His mouth is closed. His eyes dim and then—

_Take a deep breath, young frost. You must be as the water is—or you will drown.  
_The reservoir suddenly consumes us both and swirls in all directions, a floating whirlpool suspended in the air. It is searching—he is searching—for a way out.

It returns to its source and we are carried through the sluice gate into the great underground canal. For one moment, I am able to free myself from its hold, for a breath, just one deep breath and then—

The cool, swirling darkness takes a hold of me once more. There must be air, there must be light—there must be a way out. I realize what I have to do as my last ounce of breath threatens to burst free from my lungs. I root myself to the floor that the water's membrane creates, and I twist as it does, until I can send the water—and us—hurtling upward, into the black. There is a ring of light—I reach for it, extending the water as high as I can bring it to go—and with the release of my last breath—the water explodes.

We are sent through an opening, into the open air. My eyes open and I can see the city streets below. The evening sun is setting, the autumn breeze brushes my wet hair out of my face. I see Jin, no longer glowing, and I use the water around us to bring him close to me.

I surround us in snow—and we fall.


End file.
